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08 October 2011

Is Occupy Wall Street progressive?

We got a good debate going in Earl’s last post on the
limitations and possibilities of the Occupy Wall Street movement. A lot of
attention rightly focused on the inadequacy of the critique embodied by the
protesters, I won’t take issue there. The question I want to raise is whether this is a force we should work with or not, which is a very different question.

We can get a better feel for the occupiers’ position by
reading the “Declaration of the Occupation of Wall Street”, which was passed by consensus
at the occupation. Contrary to the impression left by slogans like “the 99
percent against the 1 percent” or the symbolism of occupying Wall Street, the
targets here are not restricted to bankers or finance capital or rich people.
It’s the power of large corporations in general, over all aspects of life, that
is opposed.

In some sense the statement represents the grab-bag of left
causes – mortgage abuse! gender discrimination! animal torture! death penalty!
alternative energy! – that critics always ridicule. But the notorious
single-issue parochialism that has hobbled the left for two decades comes
together in the Declaration (if not always at the occupation) much more organically
than it has in the past. There actually is one issue, which actually does unite all these problems, and that’s corporate power.

The protesters’ position still doesn’t really grasp the
nature of capitalism, as everyone quickly pointed out, or even the nature of
the crisis, as I’ve argued (here, here, here).
But it should allay some of the particular fears that the occupiers are primarily
attacking finance and glorifying productive capital.

Frank’s preferred opposition rather than “the 99 percent against
the 1 percent” is “workers against capitalists”. He’s certainly right that this
opposition gets to the nature of capitalism in a way that demonizing “the 1
percent” never can. “The 1 percent” is a category of distribution: who controls
the wealth. “The capitalists”, on the other hand, is a category of production.
This crisis and capitalism itself are fundamentally about the control and
appropriation of labor, and there’s no way to overcome either one until this
recognition can be achieved.

But as we’ve discussed at length, the basis for a “workers
identity politics” like that which thrived in the late 19th century and during
the Depression, and which took capitalists as its target, has collapsed. Along
with it, I would argue, has disappeared the social foundations for the
particular kind of reactionary populism that proved so horrific in the 1930s
(see Moishe Postone’s “Anti‑Semitism and National Socialism” for an analysis of the nature of that foundation).
That doesn’t mean that the danger of exclusionary forms of populism that
scapegoat particular groups for the dysfunctions of the entire social system
has disappeared. But the sinews of the occupation movement emerged from
anarchism, identity politics, unions, and community organizing groups. There is
absolutely no danger of anti-Semitism coming out of this.

The collapse of a workers identity politics has certainly
crippled the capacity of the left to defend itself, much less mount an
offensive against corporations. But there may also be a liberatory moment here. The
category of “workers” is one that emerges from capitalism, which is what allowed the drive to secure dignity and decent conditions for workers
to be so easily translated into the basis of a new regime of capitalist
accumulation, Stalinist Fordism, in the Soviet Union, China, and elsewhere. In
contrast, “the human race”, which the protesters invoke, is a category that could
point beyond capitalism.

The opposition structured by capitalism is not, however,
between “the human race” and corporations, or even capitalists. It is between
the human race and capital – not a
group of greedy executives but an abstract force constituted by modern society
itself. We can leave the specific process for another time. For now the
question is whether Occupy Wall Street and its fellow travelers – who clearly
understand capital not as an abstract force but as a group of power-hungry
individuals or, at best, as a class – harbor a progressive potential.

The first issue is whether the occupation movement will even
have a significant impact. As doubters in the comments noted, participation so
far has been fairly limited, not even reaching that of the unsuccessful
anti-corporate globalization protests of 1999-2001 or the anti-Iraq War
protests of 2003. I’m still doubtful myself. But I think we have to admit that,
at least for the moment, the occupations have captured the public imagination like
no other popular response to the crisis, with the (thus far, far more) significant
exception of the Tea Party.

I suspect this is mainly because it has finally given outlet
to very widespread feelings that up to now have failed to find expression in
the dysfunctional and intellectually paralyzed Democratic Party. But can the
occupation movement mobilize these sentiments behind a political project? This
has been the difficulty up till now – there has been no shortage of attempts by
the established unions and community groups to shift the national debate from
antigovernment slogans and post-partisan fantasies to the inequities of the
economy, all of which up to this point have failed to gain any traction. Are
the supporters of the occupation movement ready to move beyond posting on
Facebook to actually taking part in the unfamiliar and often uncomfortable experience of a mass movement? If so, then Earl’s agenda of seeking to
understand the significance of the occupations will become extremely important.

We won’t know the answer for some time. But even if Occupy
Wall Street marks the emergence of a new political actor, are its intentions
actually progressive? Despite the overwrought criticisms that the occupation
movement has not enunciated any demands or an actionable political program, it
seems clear what sort of changes most of its supporters have in mind: real
restrictions on the financial sector, an end to corporate influence over the
government, greater equality of wealth, and increased regulation of
corporations to protect consumers, workers, and the environment.

I will leave for later a discussion of why this approach produces
a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the problems we face. The
immediate issue is whether this particular misunderstanding isn’t also capable
of generating action that could push us in the right direction. I think it
is.

Blaming inequality and corporate abuses on the individuals who
fill social roles constituted by capitalist society, as the protesters generally do, is a misrecognition of theproblem. These actually follow structurally from neoliberal social forms
rather than from the psychological monstrosity of corporate executives. But
modern society generates no end of misrecognitions, and some of them are more reactionary
than others, deepening the crisis rather than paving the way out of it. To this
point in the crisis of neoliberalism, the misrecognition that has taken pride
of place is that the government is to blame for the social dysfunctions we face,
and the solution is to unleash the shackles on the “job creators” in the
private sector.

Even a naïve recognition that the problem does not reside in
the state but in the economy is a welcome advance. The occupiers understand
that what is needed is not the freeing of impersonal market forces but an
imposition of greater conscious control over economic processes. Most
participants may be clueless about what form this would have to take – after all, merely redistributing
wealth would only produce new dysfunctions; only a fundamental reorganization
of the economy will be adequate. But there’s no way to bring this argument to
prominence until the debate has finally been shifted to the
economic realm.

Second, the occupiers believe that society exists, and they
support inclusive forms of sociality. Sad to say, this is in marked contrast to
the other popular political current in the US. It should go without saying that
even if the protesters don’t understand the subtleties of a Hegelian subject,
they are at least decent people. Even if only to slow the accelerating
scapegoating of the poor and immigrants and the general weakening of humanism
in the culture, they deserve our support.

But beyond that, a desirable end to the crisis will require
a cultural repudiation of the inequality of the neoliberal era and a return to
forms of egalitarianism that at least superficially resemble those of the
Fordist period. This is necessary, first, to solve the difficulties in
realizing value (that is, in order to revive consumer demand) that emerged with
the repression of wages under neoliberalism. But it would also be a key part of
any project to draw currently marginalized groups, which by subsisting in the
informal economy are a drag on growth, into the formal economy as workers and
consumers. (This anticipates an argument I haven’t developed yet, but hopefully
I’ll be able to return to it in more detail in coming weeks.)

Even the much ballyhooed bias in favor of productive capital
(“actually making something”) over finance capital (“making money off of having
money”) could have its uses. Frank is absolutely right that this misunderstands
the nature of finance under capitalism. But there is also a valid insight here: under late neoliberal conditions, finance has become completely dysfunctional
and actually is mainly making money off of money – that is, speculation –
rather than coordinating the distribution of capital among producers (I made
the argument in detail here). To address the crisis, the excesses of finance
will have to be choked off – preferably, I think, by nationalizing the banks –
and the anti-finance sentiment of the occupations could be a powerful force helping to achieve this.

Hurling critiques at the protesters, most of which they don’t
even have the theoretical background to understand (abstract labor, eg, is a
non-starter), is not a productive political response to the possibilities
presented by Occupy Wall Street. If the occupations actually do amount to
something, there’s still plenty of time to raise awareness within the movement
of the complex nature of the crisis. But there’s a long way to go and many battles
to be won before that will even become an issue. If we want to be involved in politics, we have to work with the forces that are available (even Marx did so!), and I think Occupy Wall Street gives us something that, for the first time in the crisis, we can work with.

10 comments:

These are the demands proposed by Occupy Chicago. It's a fairly modest list focusing on restricting corporate power over the government and secondarily on restricting the financial sector. The only (very oblique) attempts to address the economic side of the crisis is ending the Bush tax cuts and forgiving student debt. A real failure of ambition. Still, everything on there seems worth supporting.

This is the core:"Even a naïve recognition that the problem does not reside in the state but in the economy is a welcome advance. The occupiers understand that what is needed is not the freeing of impersonal market forces but an imposition of greater conscious control over economic processes...

Second, the occupiers believe that society exists, and they support inclusive forms of sociality."

I think these are the significant points.

So here are some thoughts on what also might make the Occupation actions potentially positive.

The Democratic Party are what we might think of as decisionists: quit squabbling, let's just get something done. In the name of acting, of "just making a decision", they also want to avoid all substantive criticism or discussion of principle. The Republican Party (qua Tea Party) has been more of the hysterics. They don't care if anything gets done as long as they get to act out. In fact, they are happy to sink everything in the name of acting out. And of each position only recognizes its grounds for acting (out) as legitimate.

In practice, it is hard not be sympathetic with the decisionist, but ethically one is always a little queasy around such Real Politik. It only deals with what is and makes what is into an absolute, rejecting out of hand anything other than tinkering.

Ethically, it is hard not to be sympathetic with the hysteric. At least they are engaged and principled. However, they usually seem only concerned with their engagement and their principles. Self-righteous, provincial, narrow and exclusionary.

Both of these positions have been expressed Left and Right, though today it mostly takes the form of Democrats and "rational" Republicans on one side and the Tea Party Republicans on the other. Actual politics would entail neither the position of the decisionist nor the hysteric, but a kind of properly neurotic position.

Pardon the psychoanalytic language, but the neurotic is the position of politics, living in the aporias of Power and Ethics. Is this Occupation stuff possibly therefore properly political? Quite possibly, though it may differ radically from place to place. I think participation ought to encourage the strengthening of politics against the inevitable plays to manipulate it in the interests of Real Politik (the Left has its own cadre of decisionists in the Democratic Party, NGOs, and union officials) or sanctified ethics (the Left also has its own hysterics, the various sects, anarchists, etc.)

Of course, I am trying to imagine what that might entail more concretely. Safe to say, it doesn't necessitate convincing everyone of Postone's reading of value or putting forth the right program (the former being a hysterical response and the latter a decisionist one.)

I would also add as emphasis, the best thing about the Occupation stuff so far is that it is putting the connection between power and wealth out there in the public sphere. This is exactly the opposite of those tendencies that either demand the reduction of everything to the private realm, that everyone should be pushed in on themselves, that civil society should be set loose and the only powers of the state should be repressive, or which demand that all decisions be handed over to "qualified professionals" and "rational administration" and all interests should be put aside, as if this was not the self-interested command of power legitimating its own self-governance without real interference from the governed.

To that extent, I think there is something positive about the Occupation actions already, despite the definite limits of their ideas. However for it to grow it has to find a way to eventually intervene effectively and not merely be content to remain an ethical show, at which point it would be merely one more spectacular moment. I think that is my main concern, that the form of the Occupations itself has a built in limit which it must surpass.

I think an important way to approach the occupations is with Ranciere's notion of the political. The political, for him, is the rupture in a distribution of roles, the see-able and the say-able (the police) that comes from an immanent outside. The political act is the assertion of the right to speak by the subject that has been excluded that right by the police. This could be Greek Demos, the proletariat or African Americans. The occupations are precisely about that right to speak. What's so effective about General Assemblies is not that they get things done, but that they let everyone speak (or at least purports to). I don't think the opening of this kind of politics yet has a subject or any serious content, but it could become meaningful depending on how things play out. To a certain extent that playing out is also up to us as engaged individuals.

One problem with a focus on banks is you end up with groups like Occupy Gainesville which seems to be rife with Ron Paulisms:http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/10/10/339957/monetary-policy-recommendations/

One of the most glaring problems with the supporters of Occupy Wall Street and its copycat successors is that they suffer from a woefully inadequate understanding of the capitalist social formation — its dynamics, its (spatial) globality, its (temporal) modernity. They equate anti-capitalism with simple anti-Americanism, and ignore the international basis of the capitalist world economy. To some extent, they have even reified its spatial metonym in the NYSE on Wall Street. Capitalism is an inherently global phenomenon; it does not admit of localization to any single nation, city, or financial district.

Moreover, many of the more moderate protestors hold on to the erroneous belief that capitalism can be “controlled” or “corrected” through Keynesian-administrative measures: steeper taxes on the rich, more bureaucratic regulation and oversight of business practices, broader government social programs (welfare, Social Security), and projects of rebuilding infrastructure to create jobs. Moderate “progressives” dream of a return to the Clinton boom years, or better yet, a Rooseveltian new “New Deal.” All this amounts to petty reformism, which only serves to perpetuate the global capitalist order rather than to overcome it. They fail to see the same thing that the libertarians in the Tea Party are blind to: laissez-faire economics is not essential to capitalism. State-interventionist capitalism is just as capitalist as free-market capitalism.

Nevertheless, though Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy [insert location here] in general still contains many problematic aspects, it nevertheless presents an opportunity for the Left to engage with some of the nascent anti-capitalist sentiment taking shape there. So far it has been successful in enlisting the support of a number of leftish celebrities, prominent unions, and young activists, and has received a lot of media coverage. Hopefully, the demonstrations will lead to a general radicalization of the participants’ politics, and a commitment to the longer-term project of social emancipation.

To this end, I have written up a rather pointed Marxist analysis of the OWS movement so far that you might find interesting:

I completely agree that this stuff is very limited, and at times even dodgy, politically. How could it not be? But I have no interest in taking this as "an opportunity to engage." I distrust the bureaucratic-vanguard recruitment odor of such sentiments, the nascent parachuting in to parasitically poach individuals and "educate the movement". I think this is a really inappropriate, but typical, way to relate to people. Of course, a worse one is to go in to pack meetings at events and try to get control over subcommittees or coordinating bodies, which will be what the bigger sects will do.

I am far more interested in using this stuff as a way to talk to people who I already have relationships with. I think it is profoundly better politically to use the energy from this, regardless of whether or not the Occupation stuff pans out as anything other than spectacle, to broaden what can be discussed without being dismissed out of hand in our own milieus. Among people I know it now becomes possible to open a little bigger conversation just because it looks like tens of thousands of people have broken into the public discussion, however politically inadequate that breakthrough is.

So I won't be handing out leaflets, seeking individual Occupiers who might be interested in my fabulous understanding of capitalism, trying to invite people to a meeting, or trying to state my positions in a subcommittee at one of the Occupation sites. I will be using this opportunity to expand the conversation with people I actually have relationships with who are not Leftists and where a potential for a public discussion presents itself in a milieu that would not normally engage with the idea that something is systemically wrong, I'll try to play a constructive role and express my ideas (including my criticisms) as clearly as possible.

Thanks for your comment Chris, it's given me a little pause. I've been organizing with Occupy Las Vegas and struggling to figure out how best to intervene beyond simply helping it happen. Though I do think we can be a little bolder with our intervention if we're not showing up with banners and leaflets about "our" program/project but actually committing to the movement and practices at hand. I think we need to figure out how to connect those folks who have gotten energized and engaged by the occupations with struggles and organizations that have existed and will exist. We have to think very carefully though how to do this. I don't have anything clear to say on this point, but we need to figure it out.

Being vague instead of clear though I think that using this as a job fair for volunteers for your organization or members for your left-formation is unethical and ineffective. Leaders (or merely members) from those struggles committing to the occupation, taking it on it own terms, and drawing the connections in such a way that inspires folks to want to become part of that struggle makes more sense to me. We also need to be sensitive to ways that the occupation changes the landscape for action and changes the exigencies of the work we're already doing. This means understanding spontaneous emergent movements as internal to the historical process existing movements have been engaged in. To this end we need to be listening as much or more than we are speaking. We need to allow these protests to answer our theoretical and practical problems as much as we need to bring our answers to them.